22 April 2009

Getting information about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is like getting blood from a stone, but here's an article with some useful informtion:

The EU Commission is “committed to improve the international legal framework for IP protection” and sees “ACTA as one way to reach that goal,” Devigne said. There was no intention to duplicate TRIPS. Rather, “we want to go beyond it,” he said, adding, “TRIPS is the floor, not the ceiling.”

Well, that's pretty clear: they are aiming to produce something even worse than TRIPS. This, though, is less convincing:

“It is not that we want to hide something, we just don’t have something to show.” Devigne also rejected all claims about a possibly secrecy in the negotiations. “Quite on the contrary, for international trade negotiations we normally do not have such a democracy exercise where everybody can raise their concern,” said Devigne. For this kind of negotiations the Commission would normally only consult with member states.

One other nugget is the following:

so far there is only consensus in any case to exempt patents from criminal law sanctions.

About Me

I have been a technology journalist and consultant for 30 years, covering
the Internet since March 1994, and the free software world since 1995.

One early feature I wrote was for Wired in 1997:
The Greatest OS that (N)ever Was.
My most recent books are Rebel Code: Linux and the Open Source Revolution, and Digital Code of Life: How Bioinformatics is Revolutionizing Science, Medicine and Business.